Purpose of Emergency Lighting
The task of emergency lighting is to provide enough light in the event of a power failure to enable all occupants to evacuate the building safely. Stairways, changes in direction and level are parts of the building which require particular attention.
Maintained and Non-Maintained Lighting
There are two basic types of emergency lighting maintained and non maintained. A maintained light is one that is on all the time and a non-maintained light comes on only when mains power is lost.
Different Styles
The basic emergency light is a thing of no great beauty but it does its job and is cheap. There is an increasing range of architectural solutions and now its is possible to run your emergency light off your fire alarm loop.
So there are ways of making emergency lighting more un-obtrusive.
Emergency lighting needs to be checked monthly by way of a flick test and every 6 months when the power is withdrawn for 1 or 3 hours to test the batteries.